


The Silver Mink

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel
Genre: Cancer, Gen, I don’t do ships well, I secretly wish I was a baker, This is me projecting, Uh..., enjoy, no one dies, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-06 13:36:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14058096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In New York City, there is a bakery named ‘The Silver Mink’.  It’s run by Lydia Clements, who just wants to bake and let the supers go about their day.  That just doesn’t work out, some days.





	1. First Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work and one of the only ones I’ve completed. This is a whole universe and ignores most canon for my purposes. Enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another story! I love original characters, I'm sorry. (Eh, not really)
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

The location: A small but clean bakery in New York City called the Silver Mink, run by an 18-year-old girl named Lydia Clements, a girl with long blonde hair pulled into a tight braided bun at the back of her head and long skirt sweeping across the floor below her apron.  
The time: Early Sunday morning, when Lydia is supposed to be home, asleep. Her alarm had gone off regardless, waking her up, and she had decided to be productive and head into work.

  
She unlocked the door to her bakery and flipped the sign to open, breezing through her bakery and turning on the air conditioning by the ovens, and the heating by the freezers. As people began to straggle in for orders, Lydia began baking cookies and muffins, handing them out with a smile and cheerful farewell.

  
“You’re open today.” An elderly grandmother who always came for an oatmeal raisin cookie said as she tightly gripped the plain white paper bag that her order rested in.

  
“I woke up early.” Lydia shrugs and smiles at the grandmother, who nods and leaves the store. Sighing, she heads into the kitchen and narrows her eyes at the overflowing trash can, filled with wrappers and burned pastries. “Of all the days I need to take out the trash…” Muttering under her breath, she hauls the bulging trash bag outside and slams the dumpster lid open, about to throw her bag in when she notices a shadow that seems just a little solid curled behind it. Lydia sets her bag on the ground and creeps closer to it. There’s a sudden flash of metal and she finds her outstretched hand gripped firmly by a hand made of metal. It belongs to a man with thick, wild-looking black hair and dark, haunted eyes. Her gaze, wide and slightly frightened, meets his and he hurriedly releases her hand, leaning away and muttering in what sounds like a foreign language quietly.

  
“Are you hungry?” She finds herself asking and the man just stares at her, confused. She looks at him and holds a hand out in a gesture meant to say, ‘stay here.’ Dashing back inside, she closes up shop quickly and seizes half a loaf of her rosemary-basil bread before returning to the alley, holding her breath with hope that the man was still there. He was, even still crouching in the same position she had left him in. He glanced up at her as she approached, holding the bread in front of her like a peace offering. He looked like he was struggling internally for a moment before his flesh hand darted out and snatched the bread away from her tearing off a hunk with his metal hand and stuffing it in his mouth, chewing hurriedly.

  
“Slow down.” Lydia fussed, reaching out and laying her hand over the man’s flesh one. “If you eat so fast, you’re going to get sick. Do you have a name?” He shook his head as he obediently chewed slower and she pursed her lips in thought. “Well, until we can think of a proper name for you, we’ll just call you Shadow, ‘cause that’s where I found you. Is that okay?” He nodded and Lydia beamed, crouching next to him and resting her-flour dusted hands on her apron-covered knees. “Alright, Shadow, why don’t you come inside? I’ve got more food and it’s cleaner than out here. I don’t want you getting sick.” He grunted and staggered to his feet, obviously weak from hunger and exhaustion. Sighing, Lydia guided him in through the back door of the bakery and watched as he collapsed on a wooden stool, worn out from that short walk. “Alright, Shadow, finish eating and the I’ll put you on the cot in the back, okay?” His chest went still suddenly. Everything about the man went still and Lydia recognized fight or flight enough to know that that’s what was pumping through his veins. She held her hands up in a gesture of surrender and backed away from him. “Listen, Shadow, I’m not going to hurt you. My name’s Lydia, okay? I’m just a kid running a bakery, and to add to that, I’m really, really pacifist, so please don’t be scared of me.” Shadow watched her for a long moment before taking a deep, shuddering breath and returning to the loaf of bread. “I guess that means I just passed the Shadow Safety Test. Alright, once you’re done eating, the cot’s upstairs. Do you want an extra blanket, because I already have one on there.” He shook his head and she nodded in understanding. “Okay, then. I’ll stay down here and clean everything up. You get some good rest, okay?” He silently ghosted up the stairs and Lydia found herself humming under her breath as she wet a rag and began wiping down the kitchen.


	2. One Week

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shadow comes back again. He and Lydia strike up a conversation that consists of mostly her talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I accidentally uploaded this to my other story! Whoops! terribly sorry about that.

Though Shadow was gone the next morning, Lydia couldn’t bring herself to be worried for the odd, robot-armed man.  From her little interaction with him, she had the strangest feeling that he could chew New York City up and spit it out before it had even bared its teeth at him.  Nonetheless, when he returned, a week later, she felt a smile crossing her face. He was cleaner this time, had probably washed up in a Toot-N-Totum sink or somewhere equally accessible.  His clothes, hair, and hunger were all still wild, though. Lydia repeated the process, closing up shop and bringing him some food, this time a snicker-doodle with a bottle of water. 

 

“I was hoping you’d come back.”  She admitted to him, back turned on him as she kneaded some dough into submission, a few strands of her blonde hair leaking out of the bun.  “This is a big city, and it’s nice to have friends, you know?” She waited a moment, not for a response, just thinking. “Or at least, I like to consider us friends.  You’re an odd duck, Shadow. But that’s okay. America is the world’s melting pot, and you’re bound to dip something weird into fondue, just to see what it tastes like.  For instance, this one time I-”

 

“Stay?”  Shadow’s voice was horribly creaky and rough from disuse and Lydia heard him unscrew the water bottle as her hands went still.  He had phrased it like a question, and Lydia had an inkling of what he was asking, but she knew that this was a man with whom she could not jump to conclusions.  Slowly, she detached her hands from the quicksand of the dough and cleaned them on the apron, turning to face him as he stared at her with eyes slightly less wild than they had been their first meeting.

 

“You want to stay here?”  She asked and Shadow glanced down, nodding slowly.  “If you do… Would you mind if I got you to help me with the bakery?”  He looked back up with wide eyes and shook his head, almost as if he couldn’t believe that she was even entertaining the thought of letting him stay, like he had asked out of sheer desperation, which he probably had.  “Excellent! Then yes, Shadow, you can stay here as an official employee of the Silver Mink!” She smiled and he did an odd lip-twitch thing that looked like a smile before she returned to her kneading and he his eating.  

 

The next day, Shadow stayed in the kitchen, reading and re-reading all of the recipes Lydia had collected on index cards, occasionally stopping her in her hustle and bustle to point out an ingredient.  She showed him where it was and returned to baking, keeping up a steady monologue of everything she did, from taking orders (which she assured him he didn’t have to do if he didn’t want to) to setting the three ovens to different temperatures for different pastries, to cleaning up at the end of the day.  Shadow was still mostly mute, but several of the customers outside the walls of the Silver Mink agreed that a helper was just the thing Lydia needed, someone to listen to her blather on once the customers had all left. 

 

Shadow never accompanied Lydia to the market to buy ingredients, but he understood and took over baking when she needed to get off her feet.  Lydia never asked about his past, setting sandwiches on a small plastic nightstand by his cot when he wasn’t feeling well enough to work. Lydia mentioned her family back in Texas and Shadow didn’t mention any family.  Lydia sang quietly under her breath when the front was empty and the two were working in the back, and she beamed and sang louder when Shadow sang along, whisper-hush voice ringing in the tiled, warm, homey kitchen. Lydia went home every night, and Shadow slept when he felt like it, cleaned and baked when he didn’t.  Lydia dyed the tips of her hair blue and Shadow was given a gift of a razor and a haircut, both of which he readily used. The two worked, in more ways than one. 

 


	3. Whispered Pains

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this story entirely written so it'll be posted quickly... Hopefully.

“I think we should go to the library this weekend.”  Lydia announced one day, a month later, as she rolled out cookie dough and Shadow sprinkled brown sugar over his own batch, occasionally scowling half-heartedly when Lydia reached over to eat pinches of the dough.  She giggled and returned to her rolling. “I bought a TV for the kitchen and wanted to show you a show I really loved as a kid,  _ Eureka _ .”  Shadow nodded, not noticing when Lydia winced and rubbed at the muscles of her upper legs.  He did notice, however, when she set her rolling pin outside and sank unsteadily onto one of the wooden stools in the kitchen.  He set his sugar shaker aside and came over to her. She looked up and smiled faintly as he silently handed her a bottle of Ibuprofen.  

 

“Thanks, Shadow.”  He nodded and returned to his dough.  “I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, so can you handle the shop on your own?”  He nodded again, gaze fixed on the granules of sugar as they fell. “We need to get you a phone so you can call me in case of emergencies.”

 

“There won’t be any emergencies that I can’t handle.”  He murmured and she sighed good-naturedly, rolling her eyes as she lifted herself back to her feet.  

 

“No, but I do like to know what’s going on.  Here, go check the batch in the oven, then put them in one of the display cases.”  The sound of shattering glass reached the two of them from out front and Shadow darted through the kitchen door, Lydia following close behind.  Her eyes widened when she saw the man in the red spandex suit sprawled on the floor of the bakery, blood oozing from where the glass of the window had bitten into him.  He lifted his head weakly and the white eyes of his mask looked at her before he groaned weakly.

 

“I smell cookies…”  Then he promptly passed out.

 

“What should we do with him?”  Lydia fussed as Shadow stepped through the glass and roughly hauled the masked man into a fireman's carry.

 

“Alley.”  Shadow grunted and Lydia scowled, smacking his flesh arm sharply with her hand.  

 

“We are not just going to ditch an unconscious man losing a lot of blood in the alley!  We should help him.”

 

“Towel, first aid kit.”  Lydia got the supplies Shadow asked for,  watching as he placed the man on the towel she had laid out.  She handed him the kit and he pulled out a pair of tweezers. Lydia watched, with a kind of horrified fascination, as Shadow examined the man’s entire body, pulling out every shard of glass and sewing the larger ones shut.  Just as he was pulling out an inch-long shard from the man’s bicep, he jolted awake and cursed like a sailor, forcing himself to hold still as Shadow finished pulling the shard out.

 

“That hurt!”  The man whined once Shadow had deposited the glass shard with the rest of them and hopped to his feet.  “But thanks, I guess.” Suddenly, Lydia had a scolding finger in her face and could see a smile stretching the man’s mask.  “But this doesn’t mean I owe you or anything crazy like that!” Shadow huffed and the man turned to him next. “Now, tall, dark, and scary, where exactly am I?”

 

“He’s not a talker.”  Lydia piped up and the man whirled around yet again.  Absently, Lydia wondered if the poor man ever suffered from vertigo with how much he moved around during conversation.  “But you’re in the Silver Mink, a bakery. I’m Lydia, that’s Shadow.”   
  


“I’m Deadpool, but you can call me ‘a hungry dude who would love one of those snickerdoodles right now’.”  He clasped his hands under his chin and fell to his knees in front of Lydia, who held her hand in front of her mouth to hide her growing smile at his dramatics.  “Please, kind savior of the cookies, save a man’s stomach!” Silently, Shadow got to his feet and picked up a tray of the snicker doodles, holding it out to Lydia, who plucked a few from the baking sheet and handed them to Deadpool, who was making a noise that sounded like a tire releasing air.  “I would say ‘God bless you’, but I don’t believe in God so just bless you.” 

 

“In exchange for the cookies, do you mind telling us how you ended up going through our front window?”  At that, Deadpool looked back at the swinging door that lead from the kitchen to the main part of the bakery and he muttered something under his breath before laughing quietly.  

 

“Yeah… Sorry about that.  Who knew those mobsters would be so rough?”

 

“The mob’s after you?”  Lydia was slightly alarmed at that and Deadpool turned back to her, arching an eyebrow.

 

“Kid, I’m not a superhero.  Sure, I may be super, but I’m no hero.  Now, if you’ll excuse me…” He rolled the bottom of his mask up until it stopped just under his nose, and he crammed the rest of the snicker doodles in his mouth before saying something indecipherable and dashing back out the door and jumping through the Deadpool-sized hole in the glass.  

 

“That… was…”

 

“Entertaining.”  Shadow spoke and went to get the dustpan for the glass shards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like it, let me know!
> 
> Any questions? Hit me up at Tumblr under the same name!


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